August 30, 2013--Cruzcare

I'm slow so it took me some time to understand why Republicans can't stand the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamcare.

During the past two years John Boehner has had the House of Representatives vote to overturn it 40 times. Literally, 40 times. It was passed each time in lockstep partisan fashion but has never been taken up in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

But every Republican who can't say no to an invitation to be on TV and, more significant, every Republican who sees himself (thus far there are no women) as the GOP nominee to run against Hillary in 2016, is basing his campaign primarily on the promise to get rid of Obamacare.

Never mind that it is based on Republican ideas and practices, from Romneycare in Massachusetts, when he was governor, to the healthcare recommendations of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

But when Obama endorsed these policies in his own version of expanding healthcare for the uninsured, everyone on the right who was for it suddenly was against it.

And now during their August recess town meetings back in their home districts, in the embrace of their apoplectic Republican base, the talk by congressmen and presidential aspirants is almost exclusively about this abomination--Obamacare. They can barely get the word out without becoming physically nauseous.

The opposition is so viscerally agitated that one has to wonder about the source of this aversion.

Thus my belated insight--it's because the Affordable Care Act is popularly named Obamacare. After him!

Forget for the moment that it is the very same Republicans who can't look him in the eye and are made physically uncomfortable when in the same room with him who labelled it such, thinking that in itself would doom it--who would want to see a doctor and have that intimate experience tainted by an overt association with him? This in itself, it was thought by conservative political strategists, would be enough for the masses to rise up and demand it be overturned.

But now that even Tea Party folks are seeing their parents' and grandparents' medications paid for by Obamacare (the donut-hole is closing), their adult children covered by their existing insurance policies, and more and more states agreeing to participate, their strategy is backfiring.

Like Medicare, which at first was passionately opposed by the same right-wing elements but quickly became one of our most popular safety-net programs, how awful would it be if the ACA followed the same trajectory and forever was named for Obama?

There's nothing equivalent for Franklin Roosevelt. The Civilian Conservation Corps could have been called the Roosevelt Conservation Corps, we could have had the Kennedy Peace Corps, and the Johnson Voting Rights Act, or the Reagan Tax Cuts--well, we did have them and look where that got us: trillions in debt.

Yes, there is the Monroe Doctrine and the Bush Doctrine. And there is the Hoover Dam, the JFK and Reagan Airports, and the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System.

But to have a substantial portion of our basic healthcare coverage named for the Kenyan-American president is too, too much.

Canadian-born Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the reincarnated Joe McCarthy lookalike, who has been in the Senate for just a few months and is already running for president, is basing his entire campaign on opposition to Obamacare. Just as Michele Bachmann did the last time around.

Maybe if we can solve the name thing the issue would go away. If Cruz manages to get nominated (unlikely) and elected (get your passports updated)--calling it Cruzcare would detach it from Obama and the millions covered could feel confident that they would not be thrown off the books and left to fend for themselves.